The Apache community produced Lozen because it was a community that developed the full capability of all its members — that did not systematically exclude women from the skills and roles that survival required.

This is not a romantic idealization of Apache culture, which had its own specific gender conventions and its own specific forms of inequality.

It is an acknowledgment that the Apache tradition recognized capability and honored service to the community regardless of the gender of the person providing it.

The Political Dimensions of the Resistance

Alongside the military story of the Apache resistance, there is a political story that is often underemphasized: the specific political failure of the United States to honor its own commitments and to treat the Apache people with the basic respect that any negotiating party deserves.

The Warm Springs Apache had agreed to multiple reservations and multiple relocations in the years leading up to the Victorio War.